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It is a very effective way of getting a military, allright. But good? No! It's like "slavery is a very good way to build some pyramids".
Its not mandatory in the way slavery is, you can choose to do a civilian service instead. I do think there is some good value in having people serve their societies in less voluntary ways, I think the unifying social effects of that alone is really valuable, in this increasingly individualistic age we live in
Cool, I can "chose" to which kind of labor I am forced (but only whether the labor is done with or without a weapon in my hands).
Crazy, I know, but you can train solidarity in a society in other ways than forcing people to work (or train them to kill and be killed).
Great, show me the country that has a working, sustainable implementation of that. The share of people that will take out more from any kind of society than they put in is too large for any group to work without at least some pressure to enforce that equilibrium.
Yep. That is what people always said towards societal change
You know, the state has crazy influence on its citizen. Where? In school. But the whole educational system is not build on community, solidarity and compassion. It's build on competition. And when you finish some 9-13 years of competition, is it strange that you end up looking for your own advantage? I doubt it. And that kind of education is eradicated magically if we then force people to rob through mud one year and further teach them how to kill? Yep, that'll work π
My friend who did the civil service spent a few weeks at a camp learning about first aid, fire safety among other emergency skills. Then the rest of the year they just worked at an art school (because they was allowed to choose where they work at) updating computers and hanging around with youths. Yea, the pay wasn't amazing but it was experience none the less, and I am really glad to live in a country where regular people have at least some readiness to help and keep the society running during wartime or any other massive crisis. This system isn't due to authoritarian governmental malevolence, its to prepare us all for a war that is unfortunately a possibility due to our neighbour.
Ok. I was a conscript, I'd say it was Ok for me as well, doesn't make it right.
Reminds me of the one heir of Germany's Balsen dynasty. She made some headlines some time ago saying something like "Forced labor during WW2 in our company was not too bad. We paid the workers and, as far as I know, treated them well."
I mean of course we wouldn't have this system in a better world, but that is just what living next to russia demands. For me the trade off of 0.5 - 1 year of service in exchange for societal safety is worth the temporary lack of freedom.
I like your example, as the pyramids werenβt built by slaves.
But, Ackchyually, ackchyually, slaves built shit in Ancient Egypt, they even had "conscripts" (funnily enough called explicitly forced labor in the Wiki article). So, all good, we pay our forced laborers some token amount, which they can't even negotiate, and then it's fine! Guess who used that argument to whitewash forced labor? You wouldn't believe it.
Anyways, to concede to your historical accuracy, I'll rephrase:
Because my sentiment was about the correctness of the result of forced labor, not about the forced labor itself π.
The conscription military only works when people feel their country is worth defending. There are plenty of people who declined to serve for moral reasons. There are plenty of reasons to criticize the system (gender equality rises to mind).
I think part of the reason the Finnish political system serves the people more than some others is because it needs to. We have our problems of course, a lot of the population is old, so prioritizing young people doesn't always happen the way it ought to. Still, most people are OK with going, very few support abolishing the system because we know we all are needed to make attacking us fucking suck.
What I never understand about this reasoning...when "most" people feel this way, why is it compulsory and needs fines? If everybody and their grandma is happy defending the country, they could go voluntarily. Who cares about the threefiddy people who don't go? They would be shitty comrades in the trenches anyway. So, why are people forced, then?
Well, what are you doing to give back to society, apart from posting on Lemmy about every form of compulsion being slavery?
People increasingly treat society and the state as a giant free-for-all where everything has to be provided by an abstract entity rather than a community where you participate.
π π
For once, I served as conscript. Even did three months extra. Funnily enough that is not so much what I consider my most interesting contribution to society.
"Community" and "participation" are the keywords here. I feel like being bullied to do something is not very "participate in something". It's just being bullied.
Tragedy of the commons, no individual downside encourages freeriding.